by Anne Malcom
“You know I wouldn’t be leaving your warm body right now, especially since I’ve gotten used to wakin’ up with it, unless it was vital. It’s vital, baby. Club business,” Kace explained.
Club business. I was no stranger to what that meant. I knew that there were no arguments, no delays and no promises about when he was coming home.
This was the life.
I let Kace kiss me, grope my boob and then walk out the door.
It was only after the front door closed and locked behind him that I realized how well and truly history was repeating itself. The men were different, in all ways that men could be different, but the club hadn’t changed. Even without the gun running, the core of the MC had stayed the same. The day to day life was the same.
Sleep was well and truly lost to me with all of those thoughts swirling. I got up. Made the bed, inhaling the smell of Kace and I mingled. Then I moved to the closet, fingering Ranger’s shirts, bringing them to my face. There was barely any scent now. So faint maybe I was imagining it.
I didn’t dwell on that, though. I kept busy with laundry. With cleaning. With making breakfast for the kids.
Jack was up first. He was an early riser, kike his father. He loved to greet the day. He’d dressed in a Nirvana tee. Shorts. Chuck Taylors. His hair was messy, getting longer now. I made a mental note to book him in for a cut.
My world swayed, thinking about how quickly my little boy would turn into a little man. When he’d be wearing motorcycle boots and a cut. I wouldn’t be making him breakfast for much longer, scheduling his haircuts.
“Sit down, honey,” I encouraged, choking up ever so slightly at how quickly my boy was growing up.
He did as I said, climbing up to the breakfast bar. “Kace not here for breakfast?” he asked.
Normally, Kace would be sitting either where he was, with coffee and his laptop, or he’d be making something for breakfast.
“No, he had to work, sweetie,” I answered.
Jack nodded, looking almost disappointed.
“What do you think of how things have changed lately?” I asked Jack, pushing a stack of pancakes toward him.
Jack eyed the pancakes as the bribe they were. I wasn’t the mom who gave me kids refined sugar for breakfast on a weekday. My boy was smart enough to know that I had an ulterior motive. He was also smart enough to see what Kace and I really were. Or what we could be. There was no way we were going to be anything if my children were uncomfortable with it.
“Of you and Kace, you mean?” he clarified.
I blinked. Yeah, my boy was smart. Too smart. He was going to remember this time. Maybe not all of it, because time was kinder to children when it came to tragedy. It dulled the edges, gently removed memories, details.
He wouldn’t remember all of it. But he’d remember enough. And even if he didn’t remember, this would affect him and Lily in ways I couldn’t even understand. My decisions were going to make all the differences in the adults they were going to become, how they’d behave in all of their future relationships.
No pressure or anything.
“Yes, sweetie, Kace and I,” I replied, sipping my coffee.
He frowned, looking from me to the pancakes. He hadn’t picked up his knife and fork yet, not a good sign. “I don’t like seeing you with someone that isn’t Dad,” he said finally.
My stomach churned. “I know.”
“But I like seeing you smile,” he continued. “And you’ve been smiling a lot more lately. He makes you smile. He cooks good mac and cheese. He knows about baseball. He wears the same patch that Dad did.” He paused, as if he were taking all of this into consideration. There were no quick, easy decisions for my boy. No, that wasn’t his way. Even before all of this.
He picked up his knife and fork. “He must be good, if Cade let him into the club. They don’t let in just anyone.”
Despite the fact that this conversation was heartbreaking, I had to swallow a giggle at that statement.
“So, yeah, Mom, I’m okay with it,” Jack mumbled through his first mouthful of pancakes. “I miss Dad, I know you do too. And Kace will never be my dad. But I think he’s good.”
Tears prickled at the backs of my eyes.
“What are you talking about?” Lily chirped as she sat down next to us. I turned to look at my daughter. She was still in her nightgown, a sleeping mask in the shape of a unicorn pushed up on her head. Lily was not an early riser. She liked to linger in her dreams.
“We’re talking about Kace, and whether you two are okay with him being around more often. As mommy’s...” I trailed off. No, I couldn’t use the word boyfriend. That felt wrong. But I couldn’t exactly use the word ‘fuckbuddy’ either.
“Special friend,” I finished lamely.
Lily rolled her eyes. “Mom, I know what special friend means.”
I blinked at her, hoping some little asshole on the playground hadn’t been schooling her on sex so fucking early. I didn’t want sex to be taboo or shameful in our house, but I also wanted my daughter to have a semblance of childhood innocence. “You do?”
She nodded with confidence. “It means he comes to sleepovers sometimes and that you might kiss and he thinks you’re pretty.”
The only reason I didn’t chuckle was because I had enough practice at not laughing at the adorable things that my children said. “And you’re okay with that?”
“Of course,” she answered. “You are pretty. And he makes you smile. You’re even prettier when you smile. Plus he always gives me an extra scoop of ice cream, and he said we’d go riding on his motorcycle when I got taller.”
Another punch in the chest.
Though my motherly instincts screamed at me at the thought of my daughter or son riding on a motorcycle, I knew that would almost inevitably happen at some point. I also knew that with Lily on the back of Kace’s bike, he’d drive like an eighty-year-old.
That wasn’t what the chest punch was from. It was from the fact that Ranger never got to do that. Lily wouldn’t have a memory of that.
How long would Kace be here to give her those memories? Would he be the man she remembered who gave her ice cream and let her ride on his bike before he disappeared? Would he still be there when she was in high school? To threaten her first boyfriend?
Those were big thoughts. Scary thoughts. Ones that made me question everything. I couldn’t fuck with my kids, take some man away from them again. But I also couldn’t take away the possibility of having someone like Kace in their lives.
This morning was still heavy on my mind when Kace came in after work. My house was the first place he went when he was done at the garage. His clothes mingled with Ranger’s in the closet now. I knew I had to get rid of them. Ranger’s clothes. Especially now that they were hanging beside another man’s.
Kace didn’t say anything about them. Did nothing to push Ranger’s presence out of the house.
That didn’t make it better, though. Didn’t make me feel any less confused. Especially since Kace was all but living here now.
It was too soon.
Much too soon.
Especially for the kids, who I watched like a hawk for any kind of emotional trauma stemming from Kace’s presence. There was none. If anything, they seemed better than before.
But still, I felt off with all of the changes. Worried that new memories with Kace would erase the old ones they had with their father.
So all those thoughts were tumbling through my head, along with the whole ‘someone’s trying to kill me thing’, when Kace got back.
Luckily, I was distracted with making dinner. With the kids talking during dinner. With bed time routines. I knew Kace saw the way I forced my smiles. The way I wouldn’t meet his eye. But he waited. Waited until the kids were in bed. Waited for us to watch an episode of True Blood. Finished getting ready for bed. He didn’t push. Eventually, he probably would, if I kept up the distant routine too long. But first, he was trusting me to work through it and talk to him when I was read
y.
That made me like him even more. It made it so much harder to fight this. To keep my walls up.
“Why don’t you want someone your own age?” I blurted, as we were getting into bed.
Kace didn’t seem surprised or offended. “Why are you so focused on age?” he countered.
I frowned. “Well, how about the fact that the whole point of being young is to enjoy life being irresponsible, selfish and unattached. Not to hitch your wagon to a horse that has a bunch of problems not to mention two children,” I replied. “You’re hot as shit. You chose this life because you wanted freedom. Getting into a relationship with me is the opposite of freedom.”
“I didn’t choose this life because I wanted to be free,” Kace argued. “I chose it because I wanted family. Brotherhood. I grew up bouncing from one foster home to another. Some good. Most not. Aside from television sitcoms, I had no idea what family was, and even as a kid I was smart enough to know that was bullshit.”
He paused, running his hands through his hair. “I knew that any kind of conventional family was lost to me. So I sought out the Sons. From the start, I haven’t been after that kind of life, fucking whatever moves, answering to nobody. Sure, it was fun for a while, but it was meaningless. Empty. Had enough empty shit in my life. I wanted a family outside of the MC. An Old Lady.” He stroked my face. “Got everything I want with you, baby.”
My heart skipped at that. At what his eyes told me. The truth in them. It was beautiful, to be sure. If I had a younger, kinder heart, it would’ve been his long ago. And it would’ve melted at his words now. But it was old, wounded, scarred. My heart was harder to own. It definitely didn’t melt anymore. It was in survival mode.
“I know that scares you right now,” Kace continued, reading my mind. “Know that you’re not ready to hear a lot of this, know that we’ve got a fuck of a long way to go. But I also know that you need to hear this. That I’m in this for the long haul. That this isn’t some fucking phase or fling for me.”
He moved to pull me into his chest, and I let him. He was warm, smelling of his body wash and the scent that was purely him. Safe. I felt safe in his arms. Mind and body.
“I know words don’t mean shit. And we still don’t know much about each other. Know there’s a fuck of a lot more to you to know, and trust me, I’m looking forward to learning every new part of you. As for me, I’m an open book. When you’re ready. For now, sleep.”
I smiled. “Are you commanding me to sleep?”
“I sure am.”
And fuck if I didn’t obey him.
Chapter 19
One Month Later
“I’ve got something for you,” Amy sang out, waltzing into my house.
She wasn’t one to knock.
I wasn’t alarmed at someone coming through my front door because of the prospect outside and because of the fact that I’d installed my fancy alarm, and only my family and friends knew the codes.
“Please tell me it’s the answers to my son’s math homework, because I’m meant to be helping him with this shit, yet I’m too dumb to even figure out how to Google it.”
Amy frowned down at the various sheets I had laid over my dining room table. “He doesn’t need math. He’s going to be in the Sons. He’s already been very vocal with both Cade and Brock that he thinks he should be able to patch in before eighteen.”
I gave her a pointed look. “Well, I’m thinking on the off chance my now thirteen-year-old doesn’t change his mind about his future in the next six years, he should have the option of going to college.”
“Okay, well get your boyfriend to do it then. He’s like Rain Man or whatever from what I can gather.”
I blinked at her. “Kace?”
She nodded. “Apparently, he’s been making the club a fortune on the stock market. Which Wire is totally jealous about because he had the title of hot resident nerd but now has to share the crown. I predict some kind of bitch fight coming.”
“Kace knows about the stock market?” I clarified, remembering him mentioning something about that when I’d been too stressed and distant to take notice. “How can I not know that?”
She grinned. “Well, I’m thinking it’s a good thing you don’t know that because it means you two aren’t spending your time talking about Wall Street.”
No, we really weren’t.
But it felt wrong, nonetheless. Because sure, we spent a lot of our time naked.
A lot.
But he also spent time with my kids. More and more now that I was running out of willpower to limit his time with us.
He listened to me complain about the fact that I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. He knew how I liked my coffee. My history with my mother.
I’d made our whole relationship—if that’s what this was—about me and had been too fucking selfish to want to know much about him. Maybe because I was scared of knowing more about him. Because it might make my feelings even stronger.
“Since that’s sorted,” Amy persisted, “now we can celebrate.” She placed a bottle of what I now knew to be very expensive champagne—you become accustomed to the finer things in life with women like Gwen and Amy around—on top of Jack’s math homework.
“Celebrate what exactly?” I asked, already getting up to get champagne flutes. Even though I wasn’t about to spend two hundred dollars on a bottle of wine—especially now that I still hadn’t found a job, and finances were starting to get a little scary—I was not going to turn it down.
Amy placed a large stack of papers on the table beside the champagne as I came back with the glasses.
“We’re celebrating a very, very, lucrative offer from one of the top publishing houses in New York City!” she practically cheered, grinning wildly.
I stared at the paper. Back at her. “You got a publishing deal?” I replied, feeling extremely confused. Amy was someone who shared everything. So I found it hard to believe that she had been doing something like writing or getting herself a publishing deal without telling us all over cocktails.
“No, fuck no. Not me. Could you imagine?” She shook her head, opening the bottle.
A soft pop resounded through the dining room, then she started pouring.
“You, my talented friend. You’ve got yourself a deal.”
I froze as my hand fastened around the stem of the glass. “Amy, there is no way that I could’ve gotten any kind of deal, since I haven’t contacted any publishers or even told a soul about writing anything worth publishing.”
“Okay, so I might’ve been a little nosy.” She held her thumb and finger together.
I just gaped at her.
She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Okay, a lot nosy. I caught a peek at what you were tapping away at a few months ago. Liked what I saw. A whole lot. Now, my upbringing means I’ve been forced to read all sorts of bullshit written by long dead fancy English people. It’s okay. Whatever. But I don’t really care about all that. I like romance. Smut. Dirty stuff, you know?” She winked at me. “Brock likes it too. He takes it as a personal challenge to recreate every scene from my books.”
Sharing. That was Amy.
“Anyway. I’ve read everything there is to read, especially when you’ve got a baby on your tit for the first year of their life. So I was hooked by the snippet I glanced at on your laptop. So when you were getting ready, I emailed myself the file. Got even more hooked. Then totally pissed the book wasn’t finished. I also knew I couldn’t ask you to finish it and send it to me because you were all secretive about it in the first place.”
She sipped her champagne.
I continued gaping at her.
“I knew you wouldn’t take my praise without thinking I was just a friend blowing smoke up your ass,” she continued. “I also knew you’ve been pulling your hair out, trying to find a job that pays decent and doesn’t make you want to blow your brains out. Pretty slim pickings. I also know you wouldn’t take a job from me or Gwen or Mia or any of us gals. So I took it upon myse
lf to contact some agents and publishers, sending them the first half of your book. They bit. Hard.”
Her eyes were alight with excitement.
“We’ve been in a fucking bidding war. I wasn’t going to bring this to you until I had a number that you deserved. That might prove to you that you are seriously talented.”
She tapped a red tipped finger on the stack of papers in front of me. “That is a pretty great number. Not what you deserve, because in my eyes, you are priceless, but it’s pretty fucking great. So we’re celebrating tonight. I’m getting you drunk. Then you can have hot, drunk sex with Kace, wake up tomorrow and have hot hungover sex, then open your laptop and write the rest of the story. If you haven’t finished it already. I suspect Kace has been a total muse.”
She was right.
He had been.
At first, misery and pain were my muse. Longing for Ranger. Memories. With Kace in the picture, I still had all of those things, but something else too.
Which only pissed me off even more.
“Okay, so you’re telling me that you invaded my privacy, read something that I did not want anyone reading, then, without my permission, negotiated some kind of deal?” I recounted, voice quiet.
Amy caught the fury in it. The girl wasn’t stupid. “Not some kind of deal. The deal. I knew you’d be pissed. Okay, I thought the champagne at the really big number might help with that, but—”
“No buts,” I hissed at her, slamming my glass down so the liquid sloshed all over the papers. “You had no right to go behind my back like that. To take something from me that was personal. That I hadn’t told you about because I didn’t want to tell you about it. That I didn’t want the fucking world to know about. I don’t need you coming in here with your two-hundred-dollar champagne trying to fix me. Or whatever the fuck it is you’re doing because you feel sorry for me. Or feel guilty about the fact that you have a husband and a life that’s still whole. Just because you didn’t have to bury Brock does not mean you get to come and do this shit.” I waved my hand at the table.